Stop Abusing the US Flag!

After the 9/11 WTC terrorism attacks, many people in the United States decided to show patriotic support and mourn the dead by attaching small replicas of the US flag on their cars. Despite the consternation of some concerning an overdose of flag display on an ever-widening variety of products, I've generally not concerned myself with it. I have a small sticker on my car in the lower right corner of the rear window. It's behind the tinting, so it isn't very bold, but it is visible. I never wanted to put anything else on my car, nothing like some of the mini-shrines like I saw in Corpus Christi, the rears of cars and trucks utilized as roving Old Glory/WTC/Police/Fireman/Bush/GOP billboards (all very tough-guy Jacksonian-ish). I love the United States and would rather be here than anywhere else, but I'm not a slavish and uncritical admirer.

Now, those cases of pro-American advertising gone awry are unpleasant and overload my sensibilities. But seeing that doesn't make me as angry as seeing some dunce driving down the highway with a torn, tattered, and wind-ripped flag on his or her antenna or clipped to a window.

I'm usually not a stickler for protocol, but as I said, I do love this country and I don't like seeing our national flag get trashed. These patriots are abusing the US flag and I'm tired of seeing it. It's disrespectful to put the flag through highway-speed winds and let it get torn to shit and ripped up. I don't know if it has any demographic meaning and it is anecdotal, but I see these torn flags mostly on minivans.

I want to pull one of these people to the side and ask them to look at what they've done to the thing they so proudly show off. Would they willingly display their children by beating them up in public? Certainly they wouldn't invite friends over to check out a new home theater system and then proceed to blast it with a fire hose. It doesn't make any sense.

Stickers are so much better. Firstly, they last longer. They can't be stolen or worn by the elements, provided you stick them to the inside of the window like I have. The variety is much greater. And they won't be able to touch the ground. A friend and I were done eating at the Bill Miller's on Burnet Rd and I saw a fabric antenna flag laying on the concrete of the parking lot's entrance.

I'm no longer a Boy Scout, I'm not on a military base or in a military family, there weren't bystanders to see it, and I'm not a nationalist or a hyper-patriot. But gawddamn was I pissed to see the flag laying there, waiting to get run over or blown into a gutter. I stopped by car and walked out to pick it up and it now resides in my apartment.

I don't know if this post will make a difference, but I hope it does. There are better and more respectful ways to demonstrate your love for America than an antenna flag.

Posted by Drizzten at September 08, 2003 10:10 PM